The only thing that is truly relevant is to consider whether bitcoin is finished if it is mined by just four companies and their associates.
i happened to see no future for bitcoin if and when it is ONLY produced (and dumped en masse) by Bitfury, KnC, Spond/bitcoinshop and Bitmain+associates.
This makes no market and 2014-2015 bear market and super slow (if any) rise in transactions volume proves it.
How can we, current miners, continue mine when nobody will sell most current miners to us? it's just self explanatory.
maybe 21 inc is crazy and it won't work, but without this proposal, bitcoin will be dead or severely marginalized within a few years.
So for you the threshold of "decentralized" is 5 instead of 4? So far I have seen nothing to suggest that the 21Inc miners won't all be working with a single 21Inc pool, have you? I have zero reason to believe that any such gadget will be configurable to me to any degree than beyond that required to make it work within the "21 Bitcoin universe". I supply Internet and electricity, on my dime, and maybe I get something back from 21? This just distributes geographically the miners. It doesn't significantly change the dynamics any, in my opinion. |
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What's kind of interesting is that there seems to be an underlying theory, that widespread mining will enable widespread adoption of Bitcoin. I personally have no idea what will make Bitcoin attractive as a currency, but it's not obvious that another million folks with tiny fractions of a Bitcoin will make it "popular".
Most everyone on these thread, myself included, are very focused on the production of Bitcoins. As to what makes it popular or mainstream is still a complete mystery to me (and I expect many others).
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There is another thread with a raging debate regarding 21 (used to be 21e6) https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1065077.0The one take away I have from Bitcoin mining is that it's important to realize that massive improvements in mining capacity, by themselves aren't really helpful. If you have a 1Megawatt facility, that's producing X Petahash, when you have the option of upgrading to new technology (i.e. more efficient), it's better to lower your electricity costs and still just produce roughly X Petahash. If you just replace all your mining gear and still burn 1Mwatt but produce 2X Petahash, it doesn't last very long. In a month, the difficulty adjustment has mitigated most of your improvement. However, if you still produce X Pethash, but you only burn 500KW, you are money ahead for longer. Maybe 21 realizes this, and has decided they can't just add massive Petahash without hurting themselves in the long run. Maybe your stated ~5.5PH is what they though they could add. I won't debate the actual value of San Francisco to getting Intel to fab chips for somebody. The thread mentioned above suggests (without proof), that the .22W/GH is a chip level value, not "at the transformer". |
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A new slogan for a router manufacturer:
"Free of Bitcoin"
After all, everybody know that Bitcoin is "mostly for Terrorists and Drug sales" based on various news articles that aren't too in depth in nature. <Huge smiley here>
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When you follow the chain of Wall Street Journal article stuff, you'll also find that 21 highlights the fact that Larry Summers has joined it's Board of Directors. I am pretty sure that Summers was instrumental in getting many of the previous banking regulations dismantled in the late 1990's in the USA. Those of you that have lived through 2007-2014 in the USA can decide for yourself how beneficial his choices were.
This doesn't instill confidence in me, but it may well in others.
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What's the typical power draw for a consumer-grade router? A couple watts? Probably 5-10 I'd guess, which probably means one good chip added to that could about double it. What's the power cost vs expected yield (or 25% of expected yield) for a 5W chip getting say 50GH over a three-year lifetime?
Are they advertising a service based around microtransactions? How do they propose to solve the problem, as mentioned earlier, of microtransactions overwhelming the protocol?
What service are they offering that is inherently benefited by integrating a hashing chip that pays the customer a fraction of its yield?
Novak and I both really don't see what they're doing that's actually any good, which means we both don't like it. Which, statistically, means it's going to be highly profitable for them.
My cynical response: None of the above questions were on the Power Point slides shown the Venture Capital guys. If you think about it, both ASICMiner and Bitmain could have pursued the same approach. The BE100 was no more than 2-3 watts, and even the BM1380 couldn't have been terrible since it was the basis for the U1/U2 USB miner wasn't it? What would you be thinking now if Linksys had decided to integrate a BE100 into every one of their routers in the last 2 years? I think what's most innovative here is that 21e6 is getting their money from guys that have deep pockets, rather than a thousand pre-orders from customers (turned creditors/investors). |
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Ok, not 2.5, but 2.3
Currently the most efficient miners are at around 0.5W/GH.
You do realize that might be the power consumption at chip level right? It might be at wall too, but we don't know. Just to be even more pedantic, we don't really know the accuracy of those values, nor any good way to verify them. I am personally doubtful about their Intel relationship, but there is also no way to confirm nor refute it. In my experience, Intel is VERY secretive about what they are doing in terms of chip fabrication and their plans. In my dealings with them, when you ask the time, they hesitate to decide if it's OK to disclose that information.  |
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Given the title of this thread, I have absolutely zero interest in donating my brain. I am using it quite heavily at the moment. Of course my wife might suggest that have already done so...... |
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We just have to hope that bitcoinwisdom is back before the next adjustment, since it was originally decreed as the decider of the outcome, right? Aside from the predictive aspects, is there any other website that captures adjustment information?
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21 Inc's business plan is brilliant.
[Some removed for brevity]
VCs understand this pitch. They see how huge this could be if it works. However, this pitch is not 21's business plan.
21's business plan is to engineer a convincing pitch, which they then present to VCs in order to get a ton of funding, which in turn they then use to design and fab their own ASIC using the world's best microprocessor fabs (Intel's), and then build multi-MW datacenters which they use to self-mine. The VCs and shareholders would not have ordinarily invested in mining, but when they see revenue coming in, they won't think too much about where it's coming from.
So far, it looks like they've been succeeding.
it might be, considering that we were happy to use 0.5-0.7w/GH equipment from Spond and bitmain while they (21 inc) were flying on 0.22w/Gh I now start to think that a significant portion of "other" in pools was 21 inc In addition, accumulating and then selling a large number of bitcoins without creating a large market is meaningless by itself or even damaging as KnC and Bitfury has shown during 2014-early 2015. The advantage of 21inc approach is that many people will have some bitcoin that they might/will spend, creating a much bigger market (enriching 21 inc investors in the meanwhile, of course, but this is fine). I highlighted a different part of jtoomim's message, which I think is the most likely scenario. If on the other hand, you believe the "Massive Internet of Things" plan, I still don't see how it helps Bitcoin acceptance. The amount of Bitcoins which most folks would garner from their 20GH that they paid dearly for in electricity costs, will be difficult to exchange (I need a wallet?), and will yield only a pittance in terms of fiat they can actually spend. Does a million folks, each with .1 BTC, really move the needle on Bitcoin acceptance? |
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As I've read things, this "Mining USB Charging Hub" is supposed to be somewhere now, or at least prototypes right? Or is the Q1 mean Q1 of 2016? I don't know how many of you have a "Charging Hub", but who's going to go to the trouble an Ethernet cable to that surprising RJ45 jack on the side, that's not present on any other "Charging Hub"? If it has a WiFi built-in, unless and until I "configure" it, it will have to hope that one of my neighbors in range has an unsecured WiFi network to sponge off of.
Don't you think even the VC guys will want to see the first "product" they are supposed to produce?
I actually think that jtoomim's analysis is right on, and that the "Internet of Things" is just a sideshow to secure funding.
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Anybody know why bitcoinwisdom appears to be "stuck"? My browser interacts with it just fine, but the result hasn't changed in many about a day.
Bitcoin Difficulty: 48,807,487,245
Estimated Next Difficulty: 51,145,889,931 (+4.79%)
Adjust time: After 1893 Blocks, About 12.7 days
Hashrate(?): 354,372,939 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):
1 block: 9.6 minutes
3 blocks: 28.9 minutes
6 blocks: 57.8 minutes
Updated: 2:25 (1.5 days ago)
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Unless they integrate hash cores into the processors already built into the things.
Several people will make issue, but how many of the Wal-Mart electronics consumers actually care to do market research on the crap they buy? How many folks will just buy what's cheap and meets their needs (wants, more likely) without caring about the underlying technology or why they're being exploited? Probably "almost everyone", even if it's almost nobody represented on these forums.
Interesting idea. While I wouldn't be surprised to see an Xbox specific ASIC which could have hash cores added, what about the Tivo? I would expect by now that virtually everything inside a Tivo is now a commodity item, no? What would a Tivo have that requires an ASIC? I would think that a Tivo is all about the software, and it's integration with an upstream host for schedules and stuff. Is there really any obvious place to "hide" Bitcoin hashing cores within a Tivo? I also then wonder what it would cost 21e6 to get Tivo to integrate their "Bitcoin mining technology"? Tivo would have zero incentive otherwise I would think. This feels a bit like the hardware equivalent of the crapware/bloatware that gets included on every new Dell/HP/Acer computer you buy these days. |
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It really is a genius idea, problem is who would actually integrate these chips into their products? Whats the benefit of a fridge maker to add this chip? "Hey buy our fridge it has a bitcoin miner integrated that will save you $1 a month off your electric bill" ....I think not lol.
Now if 21e6 does some deal where half the bitcoin profits go to the company thats a different story....now fridge company has a "free" 1PH farm and 21e6 does also.
Either way I doubt this would fly with consumers...if people find out companies are making a profit off their electricity there would be an uproar, even at 3 bucks a month.
I don't know about refrigerators, but a device like a Tivo or an Xbox routinely undergo a "teardown" sometime after introduction. Somebody will buy it and crack it open and detail all the chips and such. I wonder what will happen when they try and explain their list of chips and one of them is 21e6? It won't remain a secret in my opinion for long inside a Tivo or Xbox. Of course maybe Tivo will include an "economy" setting that turns off the Bitcoin mining application.... |
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I don't quite understand how merging your two S5's together will fix anything. My understanding was that both S5's had the same problem, and that neither works. Heed the link to the firmware image. As understand it, the latest firmware from Bitmain for the S5 has dropped (i.e. disabled) support for more than 2 blades on a controller.
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Just thinking about this a little more. It seems to me just about wherever they target an ASIC, it will always be more efficient and cost effective to construct a specialized mining device using that particular ASIC.
If they produce a "high power, high speed ASIC", then they can't jam it into a cell phone, or anything but a high power device (e.g. some kind of heating "appliance"). If they produce a miniscule power device (and corresponding hash rate), why not construct a miner with a ton of them inside? They can't be hard too cool or to power since they were targeted for some thing else. Wouldn't it be more economical to build circuit boards with a bunch of those ASIC's on each? I just don't see the economy of attaching it to some other unrelated device for the purposes of mining or "Transaction Verification Processing" if you wish to think of it that way.
I am just not seeing any compelling advantage to making Bitcoin mining an adjunct to an "Internet of Thing" device? Is there something besides being "cool"?
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It would seem to me that if the wallet address is the same for the payment into "Phil's Meta Pool" that any payment is made back to, it becomes "hack proof" doesn't it? You might not have the right name, But where ever the .515 BTC came from gets the reward if there is any.
Doesn't that make it pretty simple?
I may participate in the future, but not at this time.
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I think Block Erupters can be great fun to tinker with. I would also say that you can have every bit as much fun with 8-10 as you do with 59. Getting the first half dozen to work reliably on a hub with a Raspberry Pi feels really good. The next 50 are just an exercise in frustration, in my experience. The same applies for U1's and U2's which are even better devices. It just stops being fun trying to manage dozens of these devices.
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As I said in another 21 related thread, "just add on a little <blah> to your gadget" looks great on a set of Power Point slides at a very high business level. Bring in an engineer, and the hard questions come out, and the actual costs of "adding the <blah>" come out, and it all dissolves real quick. With the rare exceptions of devices that are designed to produce heat as a their primary function, nothing else will stand the marginal cost increase, nor the electrical power cost. Phones, USB hubs, toasters, Cable boxes really make a lousy environment for Bitcoin mining.
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Why on earth would you want to burden a PHONE with a computing task like Bitcoin mining? There is nothing free about it, and it will suck the life out of you batteries, if not run the device hot. People routinely post about "mining Bitcoin on my laptop with it's super duper GPU". The same rules apply. The phone is designed to sip the absolute minimal amount of power and keep up with E-mail and TXT, maybe GPS as well. Anything beyond that is just a waste of power and money.
Apple (and Samsung etc) go to great lengths to fit in the most capability and battery within in a tiny envelope. and not have it get too hot, and last at least all day on a charge. Just because it might be possible doesn't make it a good choice, just like mining on your laptop makes zero sense.
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